North Korea launches test ballistic missile for the 1st time in almost a year
North Korea not only successfully launched on October 30, 2024 a test ballistic missile for the 1st time in almost a year, the missile set a new altitude record, reaching an altitude of 4,350 miles, more than a thousand miles higher than the country’s previous missile record.
Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani told reporters the missile’s flight duration of 86 minutes and its maximum altitude of more than 7,000 kilometers (4,350 miles) exceeded corresponding data from previous North Korean missile tests.
Having a missile fly higher and for a longer duration than before means its engine thrust has improved. Given that previous ICBM tests by North Korea have already proved they can theoretically reach the U.S. mainland, the latest launch was likely related to an effort to examine whether a missile can carry a bigger warhead, experts say.
In other words, North Korea is getting very close to having an operational ICBM that can deliver a nuclear warhead anywhere on the globe. Worse, it appears this solid-fueled rocket launches from a large mobile vehicle, making it impossible to locate and destroy beforehand.
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North Korea not only successfully launched on October 30, 2024 a test ballistic missile for the 1st time in almost a year, the missile set a new altitude record, reaching an altitude of 4,350 miles, more than a thousand miles higher than the country’s previous missile record.
Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani told reporters the missile’s flight duration of 86 minutes and its maximum altitude of more than 7,000 kilometers (4,350 miles) exceeded corresponding data from previous North Korean missile tests.
Having a missile fly higher and for a longer duration than before means its engine thrust has improved. Given that previous ICBM tests by North Korea have already proved they can theoretically reach the U.S. mainland, the latest launch was likely related to an effort to examine whether a missile can carry a bigger warhead, experts say.
In other words, North Korea is getting very close to having an operational ICBM that can deliver a nuclear warhead anywhere on the globe. Worse, it appears this solid-fueled rocket launches from a large mobile vehicle, making it impossible to locate and destroy beforehand.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
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Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
It’s perfectly possible to find and destroy missiles being carried around on transporter-erector-launchers (TELs) be they Russian, Chinese, North Korean, Iranian or what-have-you. These are large motor vehicles. Synthetic aperture radars (SARs) can easily spot objects far smaller than any TEL currently in service.
But, in order to track such objects in real-time, one needs a constellation of SARsats large enough to keep continuous watch on enemy territory 24/7/365. The U.S., so far as I know, does not yet have such capability though we finally seem to be moving in that direction. Whether any of the commercial SAR imagery companies have satellite constellations large enough to allow such unblinking-eye coverage I do not know. I’m not even sure if the DoD could cobble together such a capability by buying continuous data streams from all such imagery vendors in combination.
We have no such capability because, up until five years ago, our military space stuff was all under the control of the morons at USAF – the sons and daughters of the USAF fools who wanted nothing to do with GPS back in the 80s because it was a Navy program. As the late Gen. Curtis LeMay once famously said, “You have to understand that the Soviet Union is our opponent. Our enemy is the U.S. Navy.”
So we have no Argus-eyed SAR coverage for the same reason we have no VLEO interceptor platforms capable of shooting down any rockets rising from enemy territory – the idiots at USAF, and the even bigger idiots that have run this country as a bi-partisan oligarchy for a century or more think that building such things would be “provocative” and “de-stabilizing.” Weakness, dithering and idiocy are provocative and destabilizing and we’ve had more than our fill of all three for far too long.